Genetic and environmental drivers of intraspecific variation in foliar metabolites in a tropical tree community

Plant interactions with abiotic and biotic environments are mediated by diverse metabolites, crucial for stress response and defense. These metabolites can support diversity by shaping species niche differences but also display heritable and plastic intraspecific variation, which few studies have quantified in terms of their relative contributions.2.

To address this shortcoming, we used untargeted metabolomics to annotate and quantify foliar metabolites and restriction-site associated DNA (RAD) sequencing to assess genetic distances among 300 individuals of ten locally abundant species from a diverse tropical community in Southwest China. We quantified the relative contributions of relatedness and the abiotic and biotic environment to intraspecific metabolite variation, considering different biosynthetic pathways.3.